The GOP’s War On Fact Checking

With today’s 24 hour news cycle, fact checking has become a normal part of the political landscape and the GOP has found themselves pushing back. During a recent ABC News/Yahoo! News event at the Republican National Convention, Romney pollster Neil Newhouse suggested fact-checkers were biased and stated: “We’re not going [to] let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

O’Connor said she thought their ad “Right Choice” attacking Obama on welfare reform has been the most effective so far, despite its being given “Four Pinnochios” by a Washington Post fact check.

Newhouse brushed off the fact check as par for the course in political campaigns.

“People are always going to get Pinocchios for this stuff,” Newhouse said. “We stand behind those ads and behind the facts in those ads.”

Newhouse suggested the problem was with the fact-checkers, not the facts themselves: “Fact-checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs and you know what? We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” ABCNews.com, 8/28/2012

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed “The Drive-By Media Was On A Mission To Try To Prove That Paul Ryan Had Lied” and called them “bogus fact checkers who used misleading data.”